


Summer Plans

by elegantanagram (Lir)



Series: HSWC 2014 Bonus Round Fills [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, John is seventeen, Love Confessions, M/M, Or underhanded interest confessions, POV Third Person, Sneakiness, Wooing, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1666895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lir/pseuds/elegantanagram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bro offers Dave the opportunity to go to a month-long photography camp during his summer vacation. Bro takes the opportunity afforded by his beneficent act to put the seduction moves on Dave's best buddy John, who he assesses to have grown up damn fine since they first met. (Moves according to certain Striderian definitions of seduction, anyway. Mostly they play videogames.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first bonus round of the 2014 [Homestuck Shipping World Cup.](http://hs-worldcup.dreamwidth.org/) The prompt was "Remember that time when Bro sent Dave off to camp just so he could hang around his best friend all summer?" 
> 
> BroJohn has actually been one of my hugest OTPs in fandom since I first got into Homestuck, and I've never written a full fic about it, so filling the prompt got away from me in my enthusiasm. Bro and John are my original two favorite characters in the comic so I've always had very definite opinions on how a relationship between them would function. This fic is premised like fairly standard BroJohn fare, with my own personal touches and so much authorial love because writing it was a joy to do.

-

"Uhhh..." There's a long pause while John stares blankly at Bro's bare chest. He drags his gaze up from collarbone to eye-level. "Where's Dave?" 

"Get right to the point, don't'cha, kiddo?" Bro asks, not budging from where he's got his arm wedged against the doorframe in a comfortable lean. "Can't spare me even a little smalltalk? A 'hey, how d'you do' before breezing right past?" 

John rolls his eyes, and doesn't even begin to answer. "I came over to see if Dave wanted to play this totally awesome new game I just bought, not to chat with you. Can I come in?" 

John almost doesn't give it, but after the briefest of set-jawed pauses, he tacks on, "Please?"

"Sure thing, whatever you like buttercup," Bro says, stepping to the side. 

It's only after John walks through the doorway and Bro has pushed the door shut and clicked the lock back into place that he adds, "Dave ain't home, though. Won't be for a while." 

John huffs, stopping in his tracks as it dawns that he might have been tricked. "I guess I can just wait here until he comes back. There's no point in biking all the way home. I don't even own a PS3, I just wanted to play this with Dave." 

Bro drops his arm around John's shoulders, steers him back around and starts to walk him in the direction of the futon. Shit was easier than pie, going way smoother than he'd anticipated. "Hate to break it to you, but when I say a while, I mean a real goddamn long damn while. Like, a month kind of a while." 

John glares, and shrugs Bro's arm off, digging in his heels and not letting himself be manhandled any farther. It works; he's not the skinny little thing Dave met in elementary school any longer. Kid has fulled out, into broad shoulders and barrel chest, his legs more than powerful enough to brace him when he puts up a resistance. Bro makes no attempt to force him the remaining three steps to the futon.

"Why didn't you just tell me that when I showed up?" John demands. "That would've saved us both a lot of time, oh my god." 

Bro shrugs. "Thought you didn't have a PS3. The way I see it, I'm savin' you a whole month's amount of time. Sit down, Johnny-boy. Whatever you've bought, I betcha I can kick your ass at it." 

"You are fucking on," John says, changing tact in a split second. 

He pulls the box out of his bag and thrusts it at Bro's chest, shoving the plastic into his sternum just hard enough for him to really feel it. He doubts John is even trying, just throwing his weight around without thinking about it. Those fucking arms, well-muscled from what Bro is well aware has been two straight summers of physical work. He plucks the case out of John's hand, pats his cheek with one gloved palm, and turns around to insert the disc into the console. 

This was the best plan he had ever fucking had – and to think he was saying that about conning Dave's blue-eyed little nerd friend into an afternoon of hardcore gaming. 

He'd reached a new low, but since that low was hells of gilded with brawny biceps, Bro just did not fucking care. 

"Hurry up," John says, from where he's made himself more than comfortable on the futon. He already has the remote in hand, wormed out from between the futon's back and the seat portion, turning on the TV and watching the game start up. 

Bro just admires that it took John all of thirty seconds to start acting like he was in his own house even without Dave, before tossing John one of the controllers and plopping down next to him. 

"So what are we playing?" he asks, stretching one arm out along the back of the futon.

John doesn't even notice. It turns out they're playing the new Tomb Raider game, which is more than cool with him. Bro hasn't gotten a chance to give it a run-through yet, and he'd heard good things. It's not really a game he can actively crush John at, but that wasn't the real point, anyway. He's chill with letting John man the controls and enjoy his new game. He's enjoying the sweet success of phase one to his summer plans. 

"Where'd Dave go, anyway?" John asks, once he's gotten comfortable with the controls and can spare some attention for chatting. 

"Summer camp," Bro supplies.

"What, seriously?" John asks. "But that's so _lame,_ why would Dave want to go away to camp? He didn't even mention it." 

"It's a real well-reported program for aspiring creatives," Bro clarifies. "Or some shit. They let him bring his new, fancy camera and have some kinda state of the art darkroom, it was a hells of easy sell." 

"It was..." John starts, before slowly turning his head from the game. He levels Bro with a suspicious look. "You got rid of Dave on purpose." 

Bro considers playing dumb and denying it. He discards the thought. "Guilty as charged." 

"You're such an asshole, oh my god," John says, returning to the game. Whoops, looks like the good Miss Croft went and got a bit dead while he was distracted, guess he'd have to retry that challenge. "Is it that bad having him around all summer? I bet you drove him off just so you could have this place all to yourself, huh."

Bro is quiet, biting his tongue on the awful kneejerk impulse to defend the lil man. Dave is the shit, and Bro has never resented having him around. Kid is creative as all hell, and summer camp for arsty-farts will do him a world of good – he practically pissed his pants in glee at getting the nod to go, after Bro had very discreetly left a pamphlet or two with details of the facilities lying around. Dave left all of two days ago, and the apartment already feels emptier, lonelier. 

But he has a mission, and he does not need Davey around to be the world's hugest scandalized cockblock. 

"Plead the fifth," he says instead, and watches John navigate Lara into another untimely death. "Gimme that, that's no way to treat a lady." 

John sniffs, but hands over the controller anyway. The game is pretty raw, just as gruesome as the reviews Bro read would have led him to believe, and it doesn't pull its punches at all with the vividness of the deaths. He has a feeling John is getting frustrated with dying far too fast, what with the technicolor detail rubbing it in his face. 

The beginning is still easy-peasy, John just obviously sucks balls at the game. 

"You workin' this summer?" Bro asks, instead of letting his mind wander onto a very unnecessary testicle-tangent. 

"Of course," John says. He's making a face, though it could be from how stupid he thinks Bro's question was, or from disgust at the way Bro easily overcomes the trial he'd been pantsing up. "My dad thinks it's good for me. Holding down a job teaches a young man responsibility." 

"You wanna come back and give this game another crack later, in between workin' shifts?" He's got both thumbs on the controller, deftly maneuvering the lovely lady Croft, and it's a damn shame he had to relinquish the nice, cozy rest he'd made for his arm. He watches John slantwise from behind his shades without missing a beat in the game. 

"Uh," John says. "I guess? It's pretty fun so far, even if it's really brutal." 

"Take another stab, then," Bro says, shoving control back into John's hands just in time for him to fumble the next maneuver required of them and off poor Lara Croft another time. Bro cringes in sympathy. "Figure it'll take you at least a day or three to beat it. Maybe more, with that clumsiness." 

John doesn't say anything right away, just grips the controller and stares at the TV, like he's utterly absorbed in the game, or maybe just like Bro no longer rates that much consideration when he has another avenue of entertainment. 

"You're lonely without Dave, aren't you?" John accuses, at some length. He's grinning, in that wide, smug way that shows too many of his teeth. "You sent him away so you could be the only big man around and then it turns out you miss him. It hasn't even been a week, has it? We just got out of school." 

"Just figured I'd score myself some company whose diapers I haven't changed, for a change of pace," Bro says. 

He's not lying. He's just very much not telling the full truth, and it might be a little too obvious. John must miss it, but he never was the brightest crayon in the box. He's not a taupe or anything either, he's just. More of a periwinkle or something. Nice to look at, but man, what do you even do with it? 

God, now even his shitty metaphors were getting away from him, this was what happened when a guy didn't get out on a real date for a solid decade. Raising a kid did a number on a man's love life. 

"Awww, you want to have me around," John says, still grinning, though it's a bit softer. Still smug as shit though, the little dickwipe. (Bro likes it, can't help it that he always had a hell of a boner for confidence.) "If I don't come back and play videogames with you, you'll get all lonesome and pine about how Dave left you." 

"Not true, Johnny-come-lately," Bro says. "Not even a little, you sure you wanna show so clearly how fresh you are off the bus?" 

"Whatever," John says. "You invited me back, you want me around, sounds pretty obvious to me." 

There's no argument to be made against that logic. 

Bro drops his arm all the way around John's shoulders instead. He remembers, mistily, when his idea of a date was to go out somewhere extravagant, to turn even dinner into a dick-measuring contest with competition that was all in his head. It mattered so much to impress people. Now he'd rather chill on his couch in his apartment that he paid to live in with his own hard work, doing nothing more impressive than playing games with someone he was into and like hell would he feel shame for those humble ambitions. 

To his credit, John doesn't flinch or even really react at all, just fumbles a maneuver in the game before making a good save, his gaze briefly sliding over to Bro. It's a "just what do you think you're doing?" look, but no complaint is given. Bro chalks it up as a win; John Egbert isn't ever especially shy about his opinions. 

"Sure," he says, squeezing John's shoulder and leaning in closer. "But you wanna come back, and you wanna be around me." 

"Don't flatter yourself too much," John deadpans. Bro still catches the little flutter of his breath when it barely hitches. 

He can feel the alertness in John. It's not the same as tension, not the same as muscles clenching in preparation for the possibility of flight. It's all in the nerves and the posture, the way John sits under Bro's arm so he's perfectly poised for whatever curveball Bro might happen to throw him. It's not putting moves on a stranger – John knows him, knows the kind of dirty tricks he'll pull and the particular bent of his humor. But he stays right where he is, no objections, silently telegraphing that whatever the next move is, it had better be good, because he's being nice and waiting for it to be brought on. 

"Nah," Bro says, shifting a hair nearer still, so it's his hot breath on John's neck, his nose brushing up against the stubble along John's jaw. "You like me." 

John laughs, and it's just a hair higher than the one Bro is used to. It's got that faint little ring of nerves, and that is the cutest fucking thing. The plan never included this in phase one, and he'd never meant to escalate above a certain level of creep – he's a fuckin' gentleman, if he's gonna perv on a kid who still needs to see through his senior year, he'll at least be absolutely damn certain to ask before he touches (anywhere sensitive, anyway, more than that is just asking too damn much). He tilts his head a little farther, and brushes his lips to the spot just at the top of John's jawline. 

John gives the faintest little reaction-shudder, discernible through where Bro has their sides all cozied up together, and tips his chin up just a hair. It's the subtlest invitation, and Bro wants to jump all the hell over it. He restrains himself by sheer, Herculean force of will. 

"I'm gonna woo you," he murmurs against John's throat. "I'm gonna woo the fuckin' hell outta you, a romancin' the likes of which you've never seen before. Stops pulled for miles. 'Cause I mean, you're obviously into me, but anythin' less would be an unconscionable waste of good opportunity, and just sheer bad form." 

"Oh my god," John says. Bro can hear Lara Croft meet one last grisly end, but he isn't looking. "Are you sure you even know what romance _is_?" 

"Sure as shit I do," Bro says. He's setting himself up for such a hard knock down but who even gives a fuck, it's John and he does know John, and his bets are hedged that Big Dramatic Gestures are just the way to go. The more ridiculous the better, which is good, because when he was auditioning personality traits, he'd made it clear that seriousness need not apply. "Prepare to be amazed." 

"Bring it on," John says. 

It's said just the same as how he accepted Bro's videogame challenge – no hesitation, just absolute, stubborn determination. Bro respects that. Bro wants to get all up on that. 

"Now I'm gonna kiss you, because macking is hells of a part of romance and I figure miss Croft deserves a fuckin' break," Bro says. "And because I kinda think you'll like it." 

John laughs, the usual one, and turns to give Bro an, "Uh huh, really?" kind of look. Bro tilts John's chin up, and kisses the stubborn set to John's mouth right off it. He's firm and certain right from the onset, and John kisses him back after no more than a beat, with an enthusiasm that just screams "I'm going to beat you at this, too" and makes it all fucking worth it. 

It's going to be the best damn summer ever. 

(Aside from that part where Dave craps his pants, when Bro sweeps his best bud off his feet and into the sunset just after he gets home, which will totally happen, Bro isn't just being cocky.) 

-

-


End file.
